The Basics of Zill O’ll Infinite Plus

Zill O’ll Infinite Plus isn’t a game many people have heard of, much less played, so I’ll start out today with a basic introduction.

Story

You get to pick your Main Character’s gender and personality through a quiz at the beginning. Apparently this affects where you start, who your starting partner is and what your initial motivation is.

In my case, there’s a dark god named Ulg somewhere, and some evil people are looking for dark relics to try and revive him. MC’s dad was killed by one such person and her brother went missing, so she’s roaming the world looking for revenge and her brother, in that order.

There’s also plenty going on about fallen heroes and corrupt kings and palace intrigues and warring nobles, plus a healthy heaping of fantastic racism (elves hate dwarves, humans hate everyone, cones hate humans, boldans are just chilling) but so far I haven’t had to get gotten involved in anything too heavy yet. My involvement will probably change how history works out one way or another, but since I haven’t gotten that far yet I can’t say any more.

Characters

Mine’s a redheaded girl I named Shenando, just to show off my awesome naming sense. I have a partner named Sera who is also looking for my brother Roy… I think? Anyway, we’re working together. My two other party members are named Luluantha and Fety, but as far as I can tell they’re not important to the story.

Apart from them, Zill O’ll seems to have a LOT of important player characters and NPCs, and just as many unimportant ones who still happen to have portraits. The scantily-clad hussy on the cover appears to be one of them, though she has only shown up once in the 17 hours I’ve played so far. If you meet a character and spend enough time talking to them and progressing their events, they may eventually join your party.

Ideally I should be mixing and matching parties, but I’ve stuck with a set party for the following reasons: 1) I’m used to them. 2) I know their strengths, weakness and abilities and how to work around them 3) I can only get one person’s ending anyway, so there’s no point raising everyone’s affection all the time. 4) Switching characters can only be done in one specific location on the map, and I don’t feel like trudging there all the time. 5) You need special one-use-only ores to strengthen weapons and armor. Once I’ve spent the money and effort powering one person up, I don’t want to let them go till I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

Gameplay

The world map is in board-game format, with your MC as a piece. It reminds me of Grand Knights History, as does the heavy use of yellow and brown tones in the color palette. Moving from place to place takes days off the calendar, and supposedly specific things happen at specific times of the year. The only thing I’ve experienced is my “birthday” so far.

While there is some story progression to be done, all I’ve been doing right now is sidequest upon sidequest upon sidequest. Sidequests give you 1. Money 2. Soul points (more on those in a sec) 3. EXP, and are the best way to power yourself up. They come in four varieties: 1. Fetch quests 2. Escort quests 3. Extermination quests and 4. Search-and-rescue quests. Nothing too complicated.

Souls: The souls you get from quests are plugged into the soul grid seen in the screenshot above. As you add soul points, the “souls” move closer and closer towards the left (in the direction of the “Get” arrow) and eventually you “get” a soul. Souls simply shape the character’s growths upon leveling up. Brave souls will get more STR and VIT, Cool souls get more AGI and DEX, Search souls get more INT and MIN, etc. You can switch souls on the fly to help your characters grow more effectively, although STR, AGI and DEX seem to be the most important stats.

Skills: Unlocking souls unlocks different Attack, Magic, Support and Auto skills. These can be purchased with skill points, earned mainly from random battles.

Battles: Standard turn-based battles. Enemies can be seen on the map and can be approached from behind to get a free turn. There’s an element system that’s actually pretty important: Light <-> Dark, Fire > Water > Earth > Wind > Fire. Enemies level up as you do, plus you get more EXP from quests than from fighting, so…yeah. Luckily there’s an ability that makes you invisible to all the enemies in one room, and Escape works 100% of the time so…yeah.

Sound and Graphics

The soundtrack is very, very good. Like, “trying really, really hard to make this good” kind of good. I haven’t heard a soundtrack this overwrought and this painstakingly plotted out since FF9. What stops me from calling it “excellent” is that same “trying too hard” feeling and the fact that while most tunes are good, a few of them don’t really fit the mood when they appear.

Voice acting is non-existent.

Graphics are late PS2 level. Lots of yellow and brown and blooooooom. I love the character designs though.

Progress Report

Level 32, 17 hours, almost no story done at all. I love not having to progress until I’m good and ready, and I think I’m ready now. Not sure what I need to do and where I need to go to move on, but there’s an “Information” option that lets you consult your party members. One of them is bound to know what I’m supposed to be doing right now.

Everything else I’m doing right now

Not playing anything else. I’m back home for the first time in a while, which means I have access to the family Wii. I don’t think there’s anything more interesting on it than Wii Fit and Wii Sports, but I’ll have a footle around to see if they’ve bought anything interesting. I also want to start a couple of other things soon.

That’s it for today!

Going on a little trip

So I’ve been busy making travel arrangements and packing and stuff like that. Been also playing lots of Zill O’ll Infinite Plus, which is a very… unique kind of game. There’s a story in there, but you can progress it when you bloody well feel like it, and not a moment sooner. I’ve played at least 10 hours, and only just got round to moving things forward just a teensy bit. Now for another 10 hours of sidequests. This is the way!

Will write about it in more detail later on. Hopefully in another day or two.

Sakura Taisen (2) – Kanna GET (spoilers)

That took much long than I’d thought it would, roughly 50 hours for a first playthrough. Halfway through I realized there was no way I could play Sakura Taisen again for a while, so I cut my losses and focused exclusively on getting Kanna. Why Kanna? First of all, she’s my best fighter so I want to reward her. Secondly she has the fewest “issues” of the girls in the bunch. Finally, macho chicks don’t get enough love and I wanted to change that.

I don’t know why, but I just haven’t been in the mood to write long posts lately. I wanted to go into a little more detail about the battle system and the story, but… After 50 hours… I think I’m a little burnt out. The fact that Kanna’s ending was more “Best Friends Forever” than the romantic ending I’d hoped for did nothing to prop up my enthusiasm. No hugging, no kissing, no hand holding, not even a decent confession. Seriously, the CG on the right is as romantic as it gets.

There’s also the fact that IMO the game dragged on about 25 hours too long. Sakura Taisen made the same “mistake” Dragon Quest 6 did: they spent an inordinate amount of time setting up one bad guy for you to defeat only to pull out several others and needlessly prolong the game after you did so.

So first they told me to beat Lord Tenkai and his four generals and stop him from taking over the capital. Okay. I did all that. Beat the guy, peace returns, I go on a date with Kanna, everything’s hunky-dory. IMO the game should have ended there, saving all the other BS for the sequel. I wish they had consulted me before making another bad guy show up (technically not a new baddie but still) with three more henchmen to beat up. More fighting, more confusion, more betrayal. And then in the end… Angel Michael vs. Satan. …what. Where the heck did that come from?! Just… seriously… the hell? And what was the whole deal with Ayame being possessed and then being possessed even further under that? The last half of the game was just urrggggghhhh…

So yeah. I enjoyed the first half of Sakura Taisen more than the last half and I’m just glad it’s over. The graphics were great, I really liked the characters, the voice acting was really good, it probably has the best sung opening theme of all time, etc etc but you throw a messy storyline in there on top of everything and it’s like urrrrrrggghhhh…

In closing, I should probably say a few words about Sakura Taisen as an SRPG. Certainly the only good thing about the latter half was all the battling I got to do. However it’s such a simple, straightforward tactical system that there really isn’t much to say about it. You don’t have to mess with weapons and equipment, there are no items, there is no EXP and growths are strictly story-based, so basically you just go out there and fight. There were one or two slightly sticky battles, but in general the AI is pretty poor. The last boss was actually kind of tough, but by using Oogami’s “Cover” ability (shield a girl from an attack while taking no damage yourself, very handy for boosting affection), I managed to keep Kanna alive and plugging away at his HP turn after turn.

I’d like to try the other games someday soon. I hope they added a little more complexity to the battle system. I hope they made the enemies move faster and attack more cleverly. I hope the others don’t drag on as long as this one did. I hope the game stories got better as the series went along. I hope a lot of things, because I actually liked Sakura Taisen, all things considered. It was a good first try.

Sakura Taisen (1)

Getting my romance fix and my SRPG fix at the same time, so I’m a very happy gamer right now. Sakura Taisen is less like a regular video game and more like an anime in game form with a few battles thrown every once in a while to make sure you’re still awake. Gameplay is 90% visual novel with timed choices and 10% very simple SRPG with rather slow battles.

Luckily enough the game fulfills almost all the criteria I set out for a “successful” visual novel so I have absolutely no reservations about proceeding. In fact “no reservations” is a little too mild, because I really, really like all the characters, NPCs included. Even the villains are so weak and comical that they’re hard to hate. And apart from Iris I can see myself getting the endings of just about every other girl in the game. I wonder if Ayame is gettable…

The only things that would hold me back from doing replays to get each ending are 1) The lack of a fast-forward button and 2) The lack of a quick-save/quick-load option for when I mess up with my choices. Maybe I should make a couple of extra saves right now so I can play from halfway through instead. Right now all the girls are kind of “meh” towards me in spite of my best efforts, but faint heart never won fair lady so I must persevere.

Is there a harem ending? I wish there was a harem ending. I want Sakura, but I like Maria too, and Kanna is awesome, and Sumire is not bad and Kouran and Iris are low-tier but I don’t want to let them go…………………………………………………………*sigh* Well, it’s called Sakura Taisen, so I’ll go for Sakura to start with and then play again for Kanna. Sorry, everybody else! ;___;

Astonishia Story – More boring than bad

Quit after 5 hours and 57 minutes. Astonishia Story is not as horrible as I’d heard, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth playing either. I quit because:

1. It was boring. The story wasn’t going anywhere fast and wasn’t doing anything attention-grabbing either. This guy is a soldier, the staff he’s guarding gets stolen and he travels the world looking to get it back. He doesn’t do anything or meet anyone or go anywhere especially interesting either. It’s a slow, tired plod across much the same landscape meeting much the same people and fighting much the same battles for hours on end.

2. I was bored. I can live without a super-good story as long as the gameplay is enjoyable. I’m not sure what to make of the hybrid SRPG-JRPG thingy Astonishia Story has got going on, except to say that it’s not fun to play at all. The encounter rate is fairly high, the EXP you get is pitiful, leveling up doesn’t make you much stronger and buying new equipment doesn’t seem particularly effective either. Also the computer cheats, and its magic seems to be more powerful than yours.

3. It’s not as bad as Tactical Guild. I already knew Astonishia Story was going to be mediocre at best, but I was hoping against hope that it would be so thoroughly bad that it would somehow double back on itself and end up in “so bad it’s awesome” territory like TG. Alas, this is not one of those games worth playing just to see if it’s as bad as everyone says. It’s not. And that’s precisely what the problem is.

The only things I can rate rather positively are:

1. The retro graphics.

2. The cluttered house and town layout made me miss Shepherd’s Crossing.

3. Every once in a while something bizarre and funny happened. Like that WTH “penetralia of Chilseong fist” skit and the part where Lloyd peeped on Ylenne in the bath…and she pulled out an axe…which subsequently became an equippable weapon. I actually laughed out loud at both parts.

That’s about it. I don’t even feel like writing one of my usual lengthy posts about it. I’m just glad to put it behind me and glad I didn’t spend so much time on it that I ended up hating it and myself. Right now I’m playing Sakura Taisen 1 and Zill O’ll Infinite Plus. Will write about either or both of them once I’ve progressed a little more.